Two or more copies of Drosophila heat shock consensus sequence serve to activate transcription in yeast.

A synthetic oligonucleotide bearing the Drosophila heat shock consensus sequence confers heat inducibility on a CYC1-lacZ gene in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This sequence CTGGAATTTTCTAGA was inserted in place of the upstream activation sites of the CYC1 promoter adjacent to CYC1 TATA boxes. These constructs were transformed into yeast and found to be heat-inducible when two or more inserts were present. The level of inducibility seemed to increase with the number of inserted sequences: however, the orientations of these sequences relative to each other did not have much effect.